The Attaché

Vivek Sapru | Originally Published: 4 April 2026

As a literary work examining the causes, course and factors leading to the outcome of its namesake conflict, The American War in Afghanistan is exemplary. Carter Malkasian’s thesis that the failure of America in Afghanistan is inherently multifaceted is extremely compelling because each argument is equally backed by a remarkable depth of persuasive reasoning and evidence. Malkasian argues that the disappointing conclusion of the war was the result of the sustained attractiveness of the Taliban to many Afghans, the repeated spurning of possible negotiated peace settlements, irresolvable Pakistani influence, the perennial poor performance of the Afghani military, the convoluted ethnic and regional imbroglio of Afghanistan’s domestic affairs and the confounding role of American politics. This essay will argue that Malkasian’s magnum opus correctly identifies the causal factors behind the failure to defeat the Taliban by examining and synthesizing the evidence provided to justify each core argument. 

The failure, primarily by America, to meaningfully engage in peace talks with the Taliban is an issue that Malkasian perceptively identifies from the very beginning of the war. The Bush administration did not consider Islamic beliefs when demanding that the Taliban hand over Osama bin Laden, a concession that would have forced Taliban leaders to “publicly reject Islam[’s tenets].” During the course of the initial invasion, as American special forces and Pashtun militia pushed towards the Taliban’s stronghold in Kandahar, a potential watershed moment occurred: with the blessing of Taliban leader Mullah Omar, “high-ranking Taliban leaders…arrange[d] a meeting with Karzai” regarding the possibility of a surrender “for immunity.” Based on statements from prominent members of both the Karzai government and the Taliban, Malkasian posits that the War was near a potential “peace deal” since Mullah Omar was “ready to stand aside.” Yet, it was not to be. America, through US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld, “ vetoed…peace with the Taliban” and told future Afghan President “Karzai that any deal would be against US interests.” This revanchist post-9/11 sentiment resulted in the bizarre decision to wholly exclude the Taliban from the Bonn Conference, where the fate of Afghanistan following the invasion was decided.

The story of botched negotiated settlements goes beyond 2001, as Malkasian deftly illustrates by addressing the individual details of several attempts. Between 2002 and the 2006 Taliban resurgence, the American government consistently rejected the “need for negotiations” despite outreach by high-ranking Taliban officials, some of whom directly met with then-President Karzai. When the Afghans proposed peace talks in 2004, the Bush Administration forbade them from engaging “anyone who mattered in the Taliban.” In his book, Malkasian also approaches the infamous troop ‘Surge’ in the early years of the Obama Presidency from more than just a military angle. He notes that the Surge was conducted primarily as a response to the Taliban’s military resurgence. As a result of this obstinate focus, the possibility for negotiations was wholly ignored, a serious mistake given that the powerful “bargaining chip” of “incoming [American] reinforcements” could have served as “leverage” and brought “the Taliban to the [negotiating] table.”

The perception of the Afghan military’s incompetence in comparison to the Taliban is a prevalent view in discussions about the War in Afghanistan. Malkasian, to a certain extent, does provide evidence to reinforce the idea that Afghan troops struggled against the Taliban, especially without American air and ground support. However, his argument here is uniquely persuasive because it rejects blanket stereotypes about the fighting quality of Government forces and examines the plethora of root causes. Despite the US government’s initial pledge to “build a new Afghan army” to replace the patchwork of Afghan tribal militias, little was done. Rumsfeld refused to fund even “20 percent of the…Afghan Army” because of the “billions of dollars” America had already begun to spend in liberating and supporting Afghanistan.  For similar reasons, America restricted the size of an Afghan force to a mere 50,000 instead of the 100,000-120,000 large force that President Karzai preferred. This lack of American support meant that the warlord and militia system in Afghanistan remained intact, denying the military centralization and professionalization the nascent Afghan government desired. Moreover, what Afghan forces were assembled were poorly trained and equipped, to say nothing of their dismal morale. Logistics deficiencies, often because of rampant corruption, hampered the valiant efforts of Afghan soldiers and the untimely reduction of “US air strikes” bolstered the strength of Taliban offensives. In a feat of academic analysis that deserves credit, Malkasian’s argument about the Afghan army goes beyond the tangibles of funding and examines the raison d’etre of Afghan soldiers in comparison to their opposite number in the Taliban. The oft-recounted tale of “low morale” is proved by Malkasian when he notes that most Afghan soldiers joined the military because of “the guidance of an elder,…a salary, or ‘good uniforms, boots, and socks’” and not because of a strong belief in any form of “national identity.” The stark contrast between the dedication of Taliban fighters who fought for values like “resistance to foreign occupation” that were historically rooted in “Afghan identity” and the widespread perception of the Afghan government as installed puppets for the West is what Malkasian identifies as the reason “outnumbered Taliban [repeatedly] overcame the better manned,…equipped…and trained army.” As some other scholars, such as Martha Crenshaw, have argued, “an outside presence” in the form of America “‘Islamize[d]” the war, bolstering support for the Taliban and fanaticism within.

Markasian repeatedly hones in on how the domestic political troubles of Afghanistan and the United States contributed to their defeat against the Taliban. President Karzai and his successor Ashraf Ghani both struggled against the perception of their governments as an American “puppet” given their installation via military intervention and the presence of “foreign troops…fighting for [the Afghan]…government.” Markasian is also unafraid of noting that the Afghan government regularly treated ethnic or tribal adversaries poorly because of past divisions and a fear of losing power, sending many Afghans “into the arms of the Taliban.” Further complicating the situation was Pakistan’s ever-present subversive influence, which heavily backed the Taliban in order to prevent a potential Indo-Afghan rapprochement. Finally, American political considerations often prolonged the War. While Osama bin Laden was killed, the lingering misconception that equated the Taliban with Al-Qaeda created a powerful incentive for US politicians to remain committed to the war. As one academic noted, “Al Qaeda…benefitted from [its] sanctuary [in Afghanistan]” but it was not equivalent to Afghanistan and the Taliban. No politician wanted to risk the political blow of letting terrorists strike the continental United States, and thus, most overlooked the nuances of the dynamics between the Taliban and Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, thereby choosing to needlessly prosecute the War.

The core arguments of Malkasian’s book are well-argued and supported by strong evidence. As such, the only potential ‘weaknesses’ identifiable are unrelated to the claims made. One pitfall that is glossed over is the question of inevitability. Though the book never explicitly says so, much of Malkasian’s analysis hints at the idea that a positive resolution of the War was never possible. In hindsight, it is straightforward to state that certain events were mismanaged by the US — heavy-handed counterinsurgency tactics, self-defeating support to Pakistan and a consistent underestimation and misunderstanding of the Taliban’s appeal and military potential come to mind. What’s missing, however, is an examination of a realistic ‘counterfactual.’ An examination of the underlying incentives that led to the aforementioned decisions is important because it would determine whether the causes behind poor US decision-making were too strong to have been averted. If Malkasian went beyond simply hinting at the possibility of alternatives and discussed their realism, methods to overcome the factors that led to the egregious conduct of the War could be incorporated into future policymaking.

One other weakness of the book is the detrimental effect its chronological structure has on its various arguments about mistakes during the War. As the book strives to balance being a history of the conflict with its multifaceted arguments, it refrains from explicitly stating how specific American actions contributed to the overarching theme of reversal (especially from 2006-2009 and 2015-2017). It is left to the reader to connect common themes (rejection of negotiations, Pakistani involvement, Afghan military ineffectiveness, the Taliban’s consistently superior willpower and appeal) to the conflict’s final outcome. While Malkasian recounts the sequence of events in similar situations (like peace negotiations in 2001 and after the 2018 “Kuchinay Eid” ceasefire), the book does not connect the timeline to his argument about negotiations as critical “lost opportunities” during many stages of the War. Herein lies the risk of oversimplification in the attribution of the failure of every instance of negotiations to the same causes, because Malkasian’s analysis of the specific reasons for their failure is superseded in their respective chapters by his uncompromising focus on the historical chain of events. The decision to explore the causes of the War’s outcome in a manner that integrates the causal reasons for failure into the wider history makes it unclear where the ‘historical’ aspect of the book ends, and where the retroactive analysis begins. 

The costly quagmire of Afghanistan offers several important lessons in the realms of terrorism and interventions. Firstly, governments ought to have clear and achievable goals that are not clouded by factors like revenge before embarking on interventions. The US effort in Afghanistan wasted precious years following 2001 without an understanding of how to handle the post-Taliban environment. Better preparation by political leaders is needed to deal with the post-conflict situation, in order to prevent the violent backsliding into insurgency seen in 2006. Secondly, coalition-building and developing an understanding of local cultural and political dynamics are a must. To a certain extent, the Afghan government was hampered by US demands that prevented their efforts to end the conflict on favourable terms. A lack of nuance in tackling local populations must be avoided. By treating Al-Qaeda and the Taliban as identical, the US overlooked potential diplomatic settlements and bolstered the insurgency by the perceived disenfranchisement of swathes of Afghans. Finally, a compelling and supported ‘counternarrative’ is needed to oppose the beliefs of insurgents. Claims of an Afghan democracy rang awfully hollow when ethnic biases remained entrenched in decision-making (like the selective eradication of poppy farming), and massive instances of ‘collateral damage’ frequently occurred. 

The war in Afghanistan cost innumerable Afghan and American lives, and those who experienced it often remark about its futility. The best that can be done is to avoid making the same mistakes that sparked and sustained such a harrowing conflict in the future.

References 

1. Crenshaw, Martha. “Transnational Jihadism & Civil Wars.” Daedalus 146, no. 4 (2017): 59-70. https://doi.org/10.1162/DAED_a_00

2. Lieven, Anatol. “The Forever War Marches On.” The National Interest, no. 157 (2018): 20–27. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26557490.

3. Malkasian, Carter. The American War in Afghanistan: A History. New York: Oxford University Press, 2021.

4. Niamatullah Ibrahimi and Shahram Akbarzadeh. “Intra-Jihadist Conflict and Cooperation: Islamic State-Korasan Province and the Taliban in Afghanistan.” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 43, no. 12 (2020): 1086-1107 10.1080/1057610X.2018.1529367

5. Stevens, Friso M.S. “We Lost – But Who Won The War In Afghanistan: Critical Lessons For Future Western Engagement.” The Hague: Hague Centre for Strategic Studies, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep36378.